Notes

I don't know if you've heard about the giant trash piles, as big as Texas, floating in the oceans but it was covered by ABC Good Morning America and there is a new site dedicated to the subject,
5 Gyres. Check it out, it led me to Vimeo.

Reminder to investigate more about the end of the free market. Harpers did a fine job covering it.

Saw an interesting movie, My Sister's Keeper. I'm a big fan of ethics and morals and the movie is a new twist.

Crazy like a

Crazy like a brainwashed FOX viewer. Yeah, I think people who watch FOX news, especially those who watch and listen to Glen Beck are crazy in a brainwashed way. I suspect that it is a disease caused by indoctrination. It's an ideological degenerative disorder. Conservative is socially regressive, the opposite of progressive.

Anyhow, just watch the following to see how crazy Glen Beck and shameless FOX News is.

Or you might want to check this out and see who is more right and who isn't...

Average of Three Misperception Rates among Viewers and
Listeners: WMD Found, Evidence of al Qaeda Link,
and World Majority Support for War
(percentages)
News Source Average Rate per Misperception
Fox 45
CBS 36
CNN 31
ABC 30
NBC 30
Print Media 25
NPR/PBS 11
Source: Program on International Policy Attitudes/Knowledge Networks

You can click here to see where that chart came from.

The prevailing view in this country is that mainstream media has a liberal bias. I remember when PBS was funded by the government and donations from viewers. I remember when major corporations became sponsors. That worried me and it seems that a liberal bias is a thing of the past if it were ever true. New and old studies along with some investigative research indicate that the opposite is true, mainstream media has a conservative bias.

Heck, the LA Times even published an article criticizing FOX. You can read about that in more detail here. There are lots of good links including Outfoxed, an NGO and the title of a documentary film by Robert Greenwald.

Here's an article from the Dartmouth that cites a couple of studies...

It's amazing, the Obama administration gave us the biggest middle class tax breaks in history and lots of people think that their taxes increased. Epistemic closure is why the more conservatives know the more they get wrong.
Michael Shermer gives his two cents, which is about what its worth..

This is the guy I like though

The scary thing about all this is that "backfire" is a natural defense mechanism to prevent cognitive dissonance. You can read about that here.

I was searching for groups that oppose Fox news, they weren't plentiful or easy to find, but here are a couple; turnoffyourtv.com
media matters
but then again, maybe Fox should fund NPR

YES, here is what I was looking for; TurnOffFox

You might want to watch and listen to what Rachel Maddow

and there's more....Fox Attacks

Some people go so far as to say the Fox news makes people stupid.

Thank goodness we still have the internet...for a while...